The Cave

The group of D Tier Adventurers looked up to Leon and a man with a sword replied.

"Hey, aren't you that low F Tier Advent-"

A man in his mid 20's who had the Iron Necklace and a wooden staff with a robe of white stood up and interrupted with a warm smile.

"Hello, fellow Adventurer. My name is Bav, I am the healer and leader of this party. We are here in the beginner's forest trying to find where a group of E Tier Adventurers from our guild disappeared too."

Leon disregarded the swordsman's words and focused his attention on Bav.

"Allow me to introduce myself as well, I am Leon from The Chosen guild. You said, a group of E Tier Adventurers?"

Leon thought to himself.

'Could it be that group I ran into on my first day?'

Bav stood face to face with Leon, who was very tall for his age at 190cm (6'3 and still growing, making the healer at an above-average 175cm (5'9) seem short.

"Yes, unfortunately, our newest and lowest-ranked Tier of Adventurers at our Phantom Guild came to the forest to try to level up to take on harder quests. However, it has been a week since we have heard from them, which is weird considering they said they would be back within a day. We are currently using tracking magic, however, it is quite slow and inefficient and we only have a general direction of northeast. Have you seen them?"

Leon started to walk away.

"I saw them a week ago, in the direction you mentioned, but I haven't seen them since."

Normally Leon would've left it to the group of D Tier Adventurers, however, for the first time in his life Leon felt like he was on cloud nine and wanted to test his new limits.

'Whatever could take on a group of high Tier E ranked adventurers must be strong.'

As soon as Leon was out of sight of the group, he started to sprint towards the direction they mentioned. He felt better than ever moving with a speed so fast, that he could start to feel the mellow wind on his face as he pushed against it.

After 2 minutes he found where he had last seen them, Leon like a detective looked at every nook and cranny in the small clearing. Just as he was about to give up since it had been a week so the chance of finding a trail was almost zero, he spotted a piece of chain-mail armor covered in blood scattered on the floor behind a tree. While most blood trail would've surely been must up by now, it seemed whoever those adventurers were, they had enough smarts to have someone leave a trail using their own bloodied chain-mail.

After following the piece of chain-mail, Leon arrived at the end of the trail, only to find himself in front of a huge cave entrance in the mountainside that bordered the huge forest.

Leon was immediately mixed with a bunch of odors coming from the cave. One of them was the familiar stench that all Goblins usually have. The other was the smell of human blood and finally, the other one was something Leon had never experienced in his life but planted a seed of fear in him.

Leon swallowed his dry saliva and prepared to enter the cave. To double-check, he clicked and activated his stealth.

-6 Mana for Skill Lvl. 2 Stealth.

Remaining Mana: 45/51

He quickly dashed into the cave, being careful not to kick any of the small broken rocks scattered across the floor. The more and more he kept running through the pathway of the cave, the stronger the three smells became. Eventually, Leon finally reached the main room of the cave, right outside of the room, decorating the entrance was a horrifying scene. Right outside the entrance that led to a huge room in the cave, four pikes decorated the entrance. On each pike was a decomposing head, Leon could only assume it was the E Tier Adventurer's and he tried not to gag. Each head looked like they had died at different times, with some already having maggots wriggle around in the jaw and eye sockets. While one of them, a female adventurer, looked as if it stuck on the pike not too long ago.

Leon quietly made his way into the room and was slightly worried at what he saw. Normally Leon would not be afraid of Goblins, however, he saw a horde of goblins ranging between 15-40. Leon could only guess as the room was quite spacious and had many different sections.

He made his way silently across the room like a cat. While he wanted to be hidden so he could start picking off some goblins, he also wanted to see if any adventurers were left, since he had no idea how many went missing in the first place. He reached a section located on the opposite side of the entrance and was also located next to a giant circular boulder.

He saw a bunch of red blood, which meant it came from humans since Goblin's had blue blood. He also noticed the foul-smelling cage, which had feces and urine everywhere.

However, the cage itself was empty, now knowing there were no other adventurers left. Leon set out to enact his plan. Even though Leon was strong to beat a group of goblins, a horde of goblins simply had too many risks and undefined variables. A rush in numbers by a massive group of goblins is enough to put a five-person team of D Tier Adventurers on the back foot.

Leon thought to himself.

'Tch, no wonder those four E Tier Adventurer's died. But weren't the goblins in the forest, small clans that occasionally fought each other out of disputes? What happened?'

Leon took his mind off the matter and started his plan. Since Leon had leveled stealth to two, he could do a lot more things now with it. The main difference between level one and two stealth is not much, except for one fact: If the User attacks a target and the target made no noise or did not alert anyone else, the User can stay in Stealth without having to recast or use Mana.

This one fact changed Leon's ways of fighting and situations like these. Knowing this, he stalked around the room looking for any poor, vulnerable Goblin's who were by themselves for various reasons like relieving themselves or simply resting. Leon managed to efficiently start taking out various alone Goblins by covering their mouths, while he cut their throats and made sure to let them bleed out before he moved on to his next targets. Using this method Leon had gotten rid of more than half of the Goblins, he has estimated he assassinated about 21 Goblin's before a Goblin had finally noticed what was going and started to yell and scream.

Now discovered Leon's stealth disabled and he was visible, he was not worried however since there were only seven Goblin's left.

As the Goblins started to yell and scream in anger at the presence of the intruder, the giant boulder in the back of the room slowly moved to reveal a huge room and a deep roar echoed throughout the cave.

"Who gewk disturb at. Jyw king ld shju feak hvm dsq eiaui gy ncep dnrfuw."